The following email was sent to faculty, students, and staff by President Cassidy on Tuesday, November 10.
Dear Faculty, Students, and Staff:
Bryn Mawr is fortunate to be in a very good position: we are attracting more applicants than ever, our budgets are balanced, we continue to hire wonderful new scholar-teachers to join the faculty, we benefit from a terrific staff, and our endowment has grown beyond pre-2008 recession levels. Over the past year I have engaged in a series of discussions with the Board of Trustees about how we ensure that the College continues to thrive and how we meet various challenges that are facing higher education in general and small liberal arts colleges in particular. Through these discussions, I have developed a vision for the strategic direction of Bryn Mawr’s undergraduate college for the medium- and long-term.
I shared this document with the Board of Trustees at their October meeting and subsequently with the faculty at their meeting two weeks later. Based on these rich conversations (as well as feedback from individuals), I have further refined the four broad goals and five broad outcomes that will be our focus over the next 5-15 years. Our next task is to look carefully at the ideas that have been generated to help achieve those outcomes in order to prioritize them and to consider implementation. I am seeking input from a variety of sources, including all members of the campus community, in this process.
I will host two open community meetings in Thomas Great Hall on Monday, November 16 (3-4:30 p.m.) and Tuesday, November 17 (10:30 a.m. - noon) for faculty, students, and staff to gather in small groups to share your ideas and help us prioritize. For those who plan to attend, I ask you to read the document (see below about obtaining the document), which contains the goals, outcomes, and some ideas for attaining those outcomes. At our community meetings, those attending will each join a small group to talk about one of the outcomes, about the ideas that have been generated to support achieving that outcome, and about how we prioritize among those ideas. We will try to assign everyone to work on the outcome they are most interested in, but please come prepared with a second choice so that we can be sure to get input on all the proposed outcomes.
Everyone in the campus community has been given permission to access the document via Moodle: the name of the folder is Strategic Direction Community Discussions. If you have never used Moodle, it is very straightforward and requires only your BMC user name and password to log in. You will see the link to the Strategic Direction folder on the left side of the screen once you have logged in. For staff who do not have regular access to the Internet, paper copies of the document will be available by November 11 from department heads in Dining Services, Facilities, Housekeeping, and Public Safety.
In order to get a rough sense of how many people will be participating, please sign up HERE if you plan to take part.
I look forward to these discussions and to getting your thoughts.